Bleeding Orange
by Turnip Knight
Summary: Rita is visiting Shibuya, but she finds herself caught up in a feud that she can't possibly understand. Killed to prove a point, she is placed in the Reaper's Game. She struggles to understand the feud and her place in it. Can she survive the game and get her life back? (If you've heard of it before, I don't own it.)
1. Chapter 1 - Beginning at the End

**((Many characters, creatures, and scenarios are the property of Square Enix. I do not claim to own anything featured in 'The World Ends With You'.****))**

The sound of the shot was resounding and final. The bullet found itself ripping and tearing through Rita's chest, sliding between two ribs, slicing through her lung, and nimbly finding its way out of her back. Rita felt the hit and her body pumped against the initial shock. There were only a few seconds of pain, but in those few seconds she felt a lifetime of hurt. Pain radiated like bright blue sparks and bounced around inside of her, the sparks replicating and increasing in speed. She tried to scream for help, but her once beautiful voice came as only a wheeze and a gasp, a cough that created more deep aches.

They say that dying is like a moment that has been stretched thin and taut into a millennium. The universe becomes vague and near unrecognizable as everything slowly begins to blink out, and while death was slow in taking Rita away from the moment, it felt surprisingly quick. The pain dulled quickly draining out and leaving a rattling ache throughout her body. The most intense part was a feeling that everything had shut down, and she was still trying to continue on. She was out of breath, but when she tried to suck in air, she found no relief, only another bout of shaking pain. Her eyes had been squeezed shut, trying to focus on pressing the pain out, but when she opened them, she was barely able to see anything past hair that was pasted to face with sweat. Behind the deep brown curtain was a world of blurs, paint blended together into a gray mess of sky, earth, and shadow.

Rita forced her head to turn, like grinding metal on metal. She knew that she wouldn't be able to move her hair out from in front of her face, her arms and legs felt buried in earth. It was impossible to move them even an inch. She searched through the muddled background for something, anything. She couldn't get the world to focus, but as the edges of the world began to darken and fade out, her eyes managed to grasp onto one solid object. The rest of the world began to slip away and soft lines became harder and more crisp around the object, person? Yes, a person in a heavy gray woolen coat. A man, staring mesmerized at Rita's dying form. A smile that was soft and devious played on his yellow tinted skin. It must have been day, because there was light reflecting off of his dark black hair.

"Finally going?" He let out in a smooth and even tone. Rita couldn't recall him. It took too much energy to think. Her head started listing to the side, sliding toward the ground.

"No, no. Not yet." He placed his hand against her cheek and lifted it up, a feat she couldn't imagine accomplishing on her own. Now she could see his his face more clearly. Sharp nose, thin lips, dull green eyes. She absorbed the information like a sponge. The most startling feature was a jagged line of stitches stretching from his cheek and down his neck. _"Just let me go..." _She managed the labored thought, but that was all it could be. She couldn't speak. She felt as though she were a bucket, full of water, and there was no way for her to be empty ever again.

"I just need you to remember something for me, then I'll let you go." It was as if he could read her mind. She tried to slip away, but couldn't manage it. She had no control.

"Tell Kariya, this is only the beginning of his suffering." With that, he pulled his hand out from under her head, and it smacked the pavement with a sickening thud. The man stood up and wiped his hands together. He turned and walked away into a fading, stretching abyss, and Rita slipped away from everything.

* * *

Empty whiteness greeted her when she awoke. Whiteness above and in every direction around her. The floor was the only exception. It was a brilliant blue, shining and breath taking. Breath. Rita's hand went immediately to her chest. No hole. No sinking feeling as she struggled to breathe. She easily sucked in a full breath and held it. She held it until her chest began to ache then, and only then, she let it out. A smile filled her face, but it was short lived. She remembered dying. Feeling surrounded in her own body, the pain, intense and dull at the same time. So why was she here?

"I'm in heaven..." She said the words as she looked around. Spinning slowly to take it all in. Nothing anywhere. Nothing but the white whiteness, and the brilliance of the seamless blue floor. She rotated until a voice rang up from behind her.

"Not quite." The voice was cool and smooth, but where did it come from? No one had been there a moment ago, but when she turned around, sure enough there was a man behind her. The man had curtains of black hair framing his face, and dark shades concealing his eyes from the world. The man was well dressed, in a sharp black coat covered in intricate designs. He had a very jazz feel over him, oozing confidence, and a calm attitude. Rita took him in. Where had he come from?

"You're in a place called the Lobby. It is a kind of waiting room for the underground, or UG for short." His words sounded rehearsed, scripted.

"I'm dead." There was finality in the statement. She couldn't find anything else to say. Her eyes looked aimlessly around the white. She prayed that he would tell her that she was wrong, but when he spoke, she only confirmed what she already knew.

"Yes. Yes, you are." Her heart sank into her chest, and she backed up slightly.

"Dios mío." Her eyes were wide as the whisper came out.

"If you don't want to stay dead, then you will listen. I'm going to give you an opportunity to live again." There was a grin painted on his face, but he was still all business. Rita tried to piece the words together into something that made sense.

"You can bring me back to life?" She lifted her head and tried to connect her eyes to his, but his sunglasses blocked her.

"Oh my, no. That's beyond me, but there is someone who can. The Composer. He can bring you back to life."

"And will he?" Rita wanted to grab onto the hope and keep it inside forever. "Will he bring me back to life."

"That's the prize." His grin turned into a full fledged smile. "It's time I told you about the Reaper's Game."


	2. Chapter 2 - Let the Games Begin

The rules he stated seemed simple, but understanding them was anything but.

1: Survive 7 days while completing tasks, including not getting erased by something he referred to as noise.

Erasure sounded particularly nasty. It wasn't dying. The man explained that Rita couldn't die, because she was already dead. Instead, she would cease to exist. She would get to feel herself be pulled apart. Pieces of her consciousness being stretched and pulled until eventually it evaporated. She would evaporate. The thought almost made Rita want to decline to enter, but she had a drive to live. She wanted to return to her home in the States. She wanted to see her family again. She didn't want to be dead.

2: Find a partner, and make a pact.

The man explained that, in the UG, Rita would be less than material. He referred to it as a state of imagination, whatever that meant. She would need to find someone tether to. In a pact, their combined consciousness would be dense enough to survive the UG's wavelength. Not that any of that made much sense to her, but the rule was simple. Find someone, offer a pact, and stick with them until the end.

3: Protect yourself using psyches.

Fighting using pins sounded ridiculous, but the man proved how lethal they could be. After clipping a pin featuring a flame design onto his jacket, he held his hand out, and to Rita's amazement, fire began to lick in between his fingers. He unclipped the pin, and handed it to her. She attempted to make the pin work, but when she clipped it onto her camisole and held out her hand, nothing happened. The man then explained that psyches work differently for different people, and with that, he pointed to Rita's feet. Her sandals, and the area around her feet were smoldering, threatening to burst into flames. Upon seeing this she gasped, and with that gasp, the area around her began to blaze in earnest. She swelled with emotions, and a sense that this simply couldn't be real. The man had to clear his throat to get her to bring things back into focus. When he held his hand out she reluctantly returned the pin. He promised that she would have pins to protect herself, and that the UG was littered with pins, waiting to be used by players. She wasn't sure she would get used to it, but the threat of being erased loomed over her head, and she refused to be erased without a fight.

4: To enter the Reaper's Game, you will need to pay an entry fee.

The most menacing sounding part of the whole affair. The man seemed almost gleeful as he explained that the fee would be something of true value. "The single thing that you care most about." That frightened her. He could take anything. What if it was her sight? What if he made her blind? How could she win if he took that? Without the ability to see, she might spend her last few moments fumbling around in blank nothingness. What if he took her emotions? He could make her feel empty inside, and she wouldn't even be able to be upset about it. Would she be able to win if she couldn't find the determination to survive? Regardless, if she wanted to live again, then she would need to win, and she would suffer any loss in that pursuit.

At the end of the rules he had asked her if there were any questions. She could only find one.

"Who are you?"

"I am the Conductor. I am in charge of this game."

"Do you meet with everyone who enters this game?" His annoying grin returned, and it made Rita's stomach flip.

"You are a special occasion. I've seen the whole of your life, and I am intrigued to see how this game goes for you. Rita Jonas, I wish you the best of luck, because if I'm correct, then your game will be harder than the average. I wanted to meet you personally. If there is nothing else, I need to ask you, formally. Do you wish to take part in the Reaper's Game?"

There were nerves inside her, and understandable doubt, but she didn't hesitate to nod, and with that nod, everything went black.

* * *

Rita dug her hands into the sidewalk, as she tried to drowsily prized herself up. Her eyes lazily flicked open. She hadn't remembered going to sleep. She began to appraise her situation. She was in a crowded intersection, bustling with people. She believed it was called the Scramble. Mid-day or so. The sun was on it's descent through dark clouds, but there were still plenty of hours left in the day. The rain was really coming down, but something was missing. Her hair wiped in front of her, and that was when she realized it. She was soaked, but she didn't feel wet. She held her hand out into the rain, and watched the rain pound onto her hand. Nothing. No sensation. She couldn't feel anything at all. She could see people holding their coats as the wind tried to rip them away. She couldn't feel the wind. No pressing sensation. It didn't take her long to realize what her entry fee was. She had lost her sense of touch. It was gone, and she would need to find a way to cope without it.

She knew that she would miss her sense of touch, but was that really what was most precious to her? She wasn't quite sure. As she looked at her hand, she noticed something peculiar. On her right hand, she had a glowing scar. The scar was in a crisp and bold print, and it very clearly said, "58:12". Where had it come from, and- but before she could even finish the thought, it changed. It ticked down to "58:11". It was a timer, and it continued to count down. Seconds ticking away, into her hand. She placed her finger into the scar, and felt nothing. When the time ticked, her finger was forced out of the changing flesh.

This timer business was weird, but she could only assume that it was how long she had to accomplish her first task. Which was another thing. Shades hadn't been clear on how she would find out about her mission. He had explained so many things, and yet, so many things were left nebulous. She looked around the Scramble. The rain was coming down in earnest, but people were still sloshing through the intersection. A man passed right by Rita, and it looked as though he knew to avoid her, but he never looked directly at her. A woman with a stroller did the same, and she knew it was just as Shades had said. These people were alive. She could see them from the UG, but they were unable to see her. She was a ghost.

She looked down at her hand again. The timer read "53:24" The time was flying away. She recalled the rules. Make a pact. Maybe then she would find out what her mission was, and she could get through the first day, but how was she supposed to know who to make a pact with? She couldn't tell who was alive and who was a part of the game, dead, like her. She was deep in thought when, with no warning, she was forced to the ground.


	3. Chapter 3 - Numb and Lost

Rita slid across the ground, head bouncing numbly off of the ground, sending stars dancing through her vision. Shocked, she tried to scramble to her feet. Her hand wiped across her head, revealing slick and shiny blood. No pain. No sticky feeling. Completely numb. _Think about it later. Get up now! _She turned around, wavering on her feet. Before her was a creature she couldn't have even imagined. It looked like a frog. It **was** a frog. At least, in the front it was a frog. The creature was green and shining with red designs around its face, but further towards the back it was even stranger; all hard lines and sharp angles, black legs surrounded by bright red lines. Even it's size was odd, staring up at her from knee height. One name blinked into her mind and she knew the creature she was staring down was called noise.

She backed up, feet shuffling backwards, hand scrambling for her purse with her eyes locked onto the creature, but abruptly realized that she couldn't feel her purse or any of the objects inside. She would need to look inside, need to look away from the creature, but she couldn't force herself to break eye contact. She stumbled back, tripped, and as the world blurred before her she realized exactly how lost she would be without something as simple as touch. She was going to die... no, be erased here.

There was a strange sound like the air ripping in half, but almost musical. Rita opened her eyes, not sure when she had clenched them shut, only to find that there were three new noise hopping alongside the one she had been facing alone. She had never pictured herself being afraid of frogs before, but she was frozen.

"Stay down, genius!" The voice rang out from behind her, and she whipped her head around. A boy in blacks, reds, and grays was sprinting towards her through the rainy muck with his hand outstretched. She reacted without thinking about his words. Her hand flew out toward him, and she looked back at her pursuers. The noise had closed the distance. In an instant they pounced, near simultaneously, as if they had one mind. The world lurched again as she was pulled away from where the noise landed. Her eyes pulled back to the panting boy.

"Don't run!" he screamed, which seemed odd, since he was the one pulling her along. She numbly followed, led by some ingrained sense of balance and direction. She couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet, couldn't feel a burning in her legs, and she wasn't looking at the ground, but somehow she stayed upright, somehow she knew that she was hauling herself across the intersection. She glanced back at the noise and they were thankfully slipping into the distance.

They had stopped before she knew it, and the teen was gasping for air. She was shocked to find herself doing the same, despite a lack of burning in her lungs. He leaned back onto a statue of a wolf, rubbed his legs, and then shot her a contemplative look. The boy was soaked all over, from his dyed black hair to his striped arm warmers, and when she looked at her clothes, she could see that she was soaked too. The rain was pounding, loud and furious, leaving the plaza near empty. The strange ripping sound started up again, and the boy's head whipped around.

"There won't be any more noise." he said, then he grimaced, looking almost exasperated, and pointed behind her. She spun to find a red and black symbol floating in the air next to the wolf statue. She looked in horror as the symbol pulled itself into a familiar form, the frog shaped form that she had seen before. _So this is where noise come from._ Rita turned back to her new partner. Partner? Had she found a partner, and what was she supposed to do? Make a pact!

"Hey, we need to make a pact!" She held her hand out and looked at him. His expression was relieved. Rain continued to come down as his hand touched hers and then everything was gone. For an instant the world was brilliant and bright. They were lifted up off the ground as the world floated around them. For a moment they were alone, and in that instant, the world flashed. Rita found herself standing next to the teen. _Was that a pact?! That was incredible! _Rita was wobbling, somehow unsteady on her feet, and yet she had this inner sense of being more powerful, more... solid?

"Do you have any pins?" The boy looked over at Rita, and she returned his glance.

"I... I don't know." She was visibly upset, but she forced herself to keep her head up. The teen didn't lose a beat.

"Don't take this one." He held out a pin and looked frustrated. His body language screamed for her to take the pin, but his words explicitly said not to. Rita was confused, but decided to reach out and try to take the pin. To her relief, he offered no resistance.

Picking it up was an odd experience. She couldn't feel it, but she could see her hand close around the pin. She picked it up and examined her movements closely as she pulled it over to her. The pin was enclosed in her fingers. She couldn't feel it, but she knew it was there. She uncurled her fingers and examined it. It had a lightning bolt running across the front of it. She unfastened the pin and then clipped it to her shirt. She was impressed with her own dexterity. Muscle memory was stronger than she ever would have imagined.

She returned her focus to the noise, only to see that they were already occupied. A strange red aura seemed almost to buzz around them, and as if on cue, the noise turned to face her with the aura still buzzing around them. A quick glance to the left confirmed what she somehow knew; the red blur was her new partner. Turning back into the yellow eyes of her foes, she somehow knew that she could stand and fight them. The noise pounced, and Rita raised her hand as if to tell them to stop. With that, punctuating the thought, a streak of light pierced the the sky and crashed into the first of the three noise. It fell to the ground pulsing from the hit. Unfortunately the single bolt did nothing to dissuade the other two noise. They slammed into Rita and pushed her backwards. She was moved by the force, but did not actually feel the hit. It was more like being pulled on a string than taking a hit and, because there was no pain, she was quick to recover.

Rita placed her hand out and pointed at one of the two frogs that had attacked. Energy crackled, and in a brilliant white and blue display, it struck the creature. Like the first, it flew back and shook from the strike, but this time, she was quick to check on her remaining opponents. She had attacked two noise, and when she turned her attention to the third, the red aura was buzzing around it. She was just about to raise her hand when the noise changed into something resembling television fuzz. The static gathered together, and then scattered before dissipating entirely. It was an incredible display, but wasting no time, she turned back to the other noise, pointing at them again and again, getting an adrenaline rush from the power at her finger tips. The lightning flashed again and again, and before she knew it, they had made quick work of the noise.

Rita hadn't remembered him appearing, but her partner was back beside her. She noticed a lack of smell. With the continued lightning strikes, she had expected the disturbing smell of singed flesh, or burning ozone, but the air was oddly scent free. The U.G. was proving to be a strange place. Rita let out a small laugh at the thought. _I'm in a place where dead people play a game to win a second chance at life, in a world parallel to the living world, fighting killer frogs without my sense of touch, and I find the lack of smell weird._

After recovering herself, she looked to her partner and found him staring at her. It was the first time she had really gotten to look at him without being chased, and as petty as it was, she wished she hadn't. If Rita had seen him from across the street and been asked to describe him with one word, she would have used 'punk'. Had she been allowed another word, it would have been 'scary punk', and up close, she wouldn't change that analysis. He had dyed blue-black hair, eight- no, nine piercings that she could see. _Don't dwell on that thought too long_... He was wearing a ratty t-shirt and arm warmers, and the fact that he could run in the over-sized pieces of Swiss cheese that he was trying to pass off for pants, was beyond her. He was young too, maybe eighteen, which somehow made him scarier to her.

_This guy saved your life. No matter what you might have thought of him before, you're in the U.G. now. You both want the same thing, and that means that you need to give him a chance. He's the only partner you have._

SNAP! Rita's attention snapped just like her new partners fingers had. That whole time she had been staring at him, and he seemed confused, and a little annoyed.

"I'm sorry, I was thinking, not staring at you. I do that a lot. Thinking! I meant I think a lot, not stare at you a lot... and ramble... I do that a lot too. Why don't you talk for a bit?" _Great, now I look like an idiot._

The look her partner had didn't do much to soothe Rita. He was clearly frustrated again, consistently frustrated; why was that? An overwhelming silence prevailed, and Rita understood; suddenly, he was connected to a stranger, tasked with protecting her. What can you say in that situation? She calmed herself and decided to help.

"How about we start with names? Mine's Rita."

"Adam." He grimaced and shook his head, more anger. How was she going to connect with him? She couldn't speak without upsetting him.

"Okay, Adam it is." Rita stuck her hand out to shake, and Adam took it quickly, but his look of disdain stayed. She had her partner but he didn't certainly appear happy with it.

So much of this confused her, and she was sure it wasn't over, but one thing kept nagging her. She watched herself shaking Adam's hand, but she felt nothing. Like she was trapped in a cage, separated from the world that she was viewing. It came to her that she wasn't happy with this either, and when she looked back at Adam's disheartened face, she felt like she understood why he wasn't happy. He was dead too.


End file.
